A humorous short story about Old Pete, an experienced angler who encounters the fish of a lifetime and a tiny bee
Old Pete had been fishing Lake Serenity for thirty-seven years, and in all that time, he’d never seen a bass quite like the one currently bent his rod into a perfect question mark.
The fish was enormous—easily twenty pounds of pure muscle and attitude—and it was putting up the fight of a lifetime.
“Easy there, beautiful,” Pete whispered to the fish, his weathered hands working the reel with the patience of a saint.
“Just you and me now.”
The bass leaped from the water in a spectacular display, its silver scales catching the morning sunlight like scattered diamonds.
Pete’s heart hammered with excitement.
This was it—the fish that would finally shut up his brother-in-law’s endless bragging about that supposedly “record-breaking” twelve-pounder from last summer.
As Pete carefully worked the fish closer to his small aluminum boat, he was already composing the story he’d tell at Murphy’s Bar.
He could practically taste the free drinks that would come with being the hero of the day.
The bass made one more half-hearted run, but Pete could tell it was tiring.
Victory was within reach.
That’s when he heard it—a tiny, angry buzzing that seemed completely out of place in this moment of triumph.
Bzzzzzz.
Pete glanced around nervously, still maintaining tension on his line.
There it was: a fat, yellow bumblebee hovering near his left ear like a miniature helicopter with anger management issues.
“Shoo,” Pete whispered, not wanting to make any sudden movements that might spook the fish.
“Go find a flower or something.”
The bee, apparently lacking any interest in Pete’s botanical suggestions, decided to circle his head instead, buzzing louder with each orbit.
BZZZZZZ.
“I said shoo!” Pete hissed, trying to duck while still keeping his rod steady.
The bass, sensing something was amiss, gave a sudden, powerful tug that nearly yanked the rod from Pete’s hands.
The bee, clearly interpreting Pete’s head movements as some sort of territorial challenge, decided to up the ante.
It dove straight for Pete’s face, causing him to jerk backward so violently that his lucky fishing hat—the one with thirty-seven years of good karma built into it—flew clean off his head and landed in the water with a tragic plop.
“No! Not the hat!” Pete cried out, momentarily forgetting about stealth fishing techniques.
The bass, apparently startled by Pete’s outburst, went absolutely berserk.
It jumped again, this time performing what could only be described as an aquatic acrobatic routine that would have impressed Olympic judges.
Meanwhile, the bee had somehow gotten tangled in Pete’s hair and was buzzing with the fury of a tiny, winged berserker.
Pete began what could generously be called “dancing,” but what looked more like a man being electrocuted while trying to perform interpretive dance.
“Get off! Get off!” he shouted, windmilling his free arm while the other desperately tried to maintain control of his fishing rod.
In his bee-induced panic, Pete stepped backward—forgetting momentarily that he was in a boat—and his foot found nothing but air. He windmilled his arms in a futile attempt to regain balance, looking like a scarecrow in a hurricane.
The fishing rod went flying in one direction, Pete went flying in another, and the bee—apparently satisfied with the chaos it had wrought—buzzed away toward a nearby lily pad, probably to brag to its bee friends about the ridiculous human it had just defeated.
Pete hit the water with a splash that could be heard three boats over.
When he surfaced, sputtering and cursing, his prized bass was nowhere to be seen.
His lucky hat floated nearby, now waterlogged and looking decidedly unlucky.
As he treaded water, Pete could swear he heard fish laughing somewhere in the depths below.
Twenty minutes later, Pete sat in his boat, soaking wet and contemplating the cruel ironies of life.
He’d hooked the fish of a lifetime and been bested by an insect the size of his thumbnail.
His phone buzzed with a text from his brother-in-law: “Catch anything good today, Pete? My twelve-pounder is still waiting for some competition! 😄”
Pete stared at the message, then at his empty hands, then at the lily pad where his nemesis was probably telling its bee friends about the epic victory over the Giant Human.
He typed back: “The one that got away was THIS big.” Then he held his arms as wide as they would go and took a selfie, water still dripping from his hair.
After all, fishing stories were supposed to be unbelievable.
This one just happened to be unbelievable and true.
From that day forward, Pete always brought two things on his fishing trips: backup bait and a can of bug spray.
The lake’s bass population remained safe, but the bees learned to give Old Pete a much wider berth.
And somewhere in the depths of Lake Serenity, a twenty-pound bass still tells its own version of the story to anyone who will listen—about the day it was saved by the smallest hero in the entire ecosystem.
